Focusing in the Space Between
What a fox taught me about presence
One of the gifts Focusing has given me is a deeper, embodied way of listening — to myself and, at the same time, to my interaction with the life around me.
As a Craniosacral Therapist, I was familiar with “going inside” — attending to sensations and waiting for words, images or meanings to emerge. Focusing opened this into something more relational. Gendlin’s simple phrase “interaction first” resonates deeply with me. I am not separate from what is around me. I am already in interaction.
Inner Relationship Focusing and parts work have become part of my daily self-enquiry as I tend to my animals. I notice what is present in me and bring it along, rather than trying to make it go away. There is something about animals and nature that gives me a spaciousness to listen more deeply and discover that it is safe to be with me.
One morning in May 2020, I woke with a familiar sense of aloneness and having to manage everything myself. I recognised a younger place in me that knew this feeling well.
I smiled and said hello, welcoming her to come with me into the fields. As I breathed, I imagined carrying her close to my heart, like a baby in a sling.
While bringing my horses in from the summer heat, I noticed a vixen sitting quietly in the neighbouring field.
She looked directly at me and something in me paused — almost like coming to a red traffic light. Yet my body continued with the familiar task of bringing the horses inside.
When I returned, I noticed a pull towards simply “hanging out” with this beautiful fox. She was still beside the hedge where her young cubs were hidden.
I crawled under the fence and sat on a rock beneath a hawthorn tree. My horse grazed nearby. Then a rabbit appeared, only a few metres from the fox.
Will the fox chase the rabbit?
But neither moved.
They remained still, each aware of the other’s presence.
We sat together in a timeless space.
Something about this touched me. It felt like the different parts of myself — each present, each known, without any one needing to disappear or take over.
There was nothing to achieve. Nothing needed to happen.
As I stayed with the felt sense, I became aware of the distance between the fox and me.
Something in me notices this distance. Is there something in me that knows this distance too?
Then came:
Do I dare reach towards you? Am I worthy of connection?
I didn’t search for an answer.
I stayed.
The fox softened and lay down.
Something in me softened too.
This is what Focusing as a way of living has come to mean for me. Nature and animals don’t provide my answers. Yet, in the spaciousness between us, something implicit can become known.
Perhaps this is Gendlin’s “interaction first” made real for me:
I listen inwardly, while remaining open to what life is bringing into the conversation.